Inspiration or Infiltration

I’ve been hunting. Not with a shotgun or bow and arrow. I’ve been hunting with my mouse. Looking for inspiration. But sometimes an inspiration steals the show. Becomes the star instead of supporting actor.

I experienced this a few years ago as I was considering what to make my beloved for Christmas. I wanted to create art to support his new interest in gardening. So, of course, I went Pinteresting and found this wonderful work of art by Freeland Tanner.

I was amazed and inspired. But then I couldn’t get it out of my head. All of my sketches were poor imitations bordering on forgery. I didn’t want to copy. I wanted to do original work, but originality was elusive. What followed was weeks of drawings and no satisfaction whatsoever. I was stuck.

I often turn outward for inspiration. I have Pinterest boards full of other artists’ work, a complete screensaver file of other artists’ work and shelves of books that other artists have written. And at a certain point, all of that information can become clutter. Inspiration becomes infiltration. Then, turning inward to reach originality requires a long journey .

Such was the case for me as Christmas neared. I had to stop looking at the hose assemblage and start something new. So I did what I knew how to do: I started gathering stuff from my collection and grouping it together. Then I shifted my thinking from ornamental to functional: a planter box assemblage. And once I broke the hold of that delicious, tenacious original inspiration, here’s what I got:

You can see that it has been gathering its own quirky additions that give it a unique personality…one that has arisen from its functionality and continues to unfold.

Do you ever find yourself stuck in someone else’s ideas? How do you break free?

Funny you should ask. I’m grappling with that now as I’m putting together a new book. I’ll be writing down my thoughts and come to something I should do more research on, googling of course. Then, after I’ve jotted down new ideas — or corrected the old ones — I sometimes wonder if those are my words or an inspirational phrase I especially liked that someone else came up with. Now I have a rule: jot only the facts down. Or, earmark the phrase indicating it needs to be changed. It doesn’t happen often since I write mostly from my own experiences and thoughts. However, the possibility is there.

Good observation about the words of others. I often find that when I immerse myself in someone else’s writing, my own writing starts to take on their style…a bit like visiting a place where there are accents and I come home speaking in a new way!